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Page 54
Chapter Three
The year and a half since Simon had fallen ill had seemed like a thousand, thousand years to Alinor. Each day had passed on leaden feet filled with terror, with an ear always cocked for Simon's laboring breath. And when that breath was stilled, time seemed to stop altogether. There were periods of light and dark that Alinor knew were days and nights; there were sounds that she knew were her voice; sometimes there was even a sound that she recognized as laughter. None of it had any particular meaning. Then time began to move again, but it had gone all wrong. Each day was endless, and yet the things that needed doing never seemed to be done.
Ian's arrival broke the dull round of "I should""I cannot." Somehow his physical presence brought urgency and reality to problems, and somehow Alinor found herself able to cope with them. This was not because Ian himself was of any particular help. In a reaction to three months of grief, indecision and anxiety, coupled with enormous physical effort, Ian quietly collapsed. He slept the day through, waking only long enough to eat enormously, have his sore back dressed, and go meekly back to bed when he was told to do so. He was so sodden with exhaustion that he did not see the terror in the children's eyes. So had their father been for a time, and then he had never played with them again. Alinor herself would have been worried except for the fact that Ian was eating for three men. She was able to comfort Adam and Joanna with the

 
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